CoD Director Doesn’t Understand Why Fans Hate Its 7 Years Old Engine

Treyarch’s proprietary IW engine has been used to develop all Call of Duty titles since Call of Duty 2 was released in 2005. Some fans are starting to sound their dissatisfaction with the fact that the company is reusing the same 7 years old engine for the next Call of Duty as well.

But Treyarch game design director David Vonderhaar doesn’t really believe that those complaints are warranted.

"Anybody who comes at the engine needs to remember it's the 60 frames they love in the first place," he said. "And we can make it beautiful - that's through years and years of working with the engine, improving upon it and improving the pipeline and improving our approach, our lighting rendering.

Vonderhaar then noted that the IW engine was continuously updated throughout those 7 years. "People like to talk about the engine, but the truth of the matter is that this isn't like something that was invented six years ago,” he explained. "At this point that engine doesn't resemble anything like any engine - we've ripped out the UI system, the rendering and the lighting are all new, the core gameplay systems are all new."

"To me, it's like I never really understood. It runs at 60 and it's gorgeous. What exactly is there to be upset about with the engine?"

HIDE COMMENTS (32)

You CoD buttnuggets are content to buy & play the same game over & over & over yet the engine is what dries yer ******* all out? I played a lots of 'em & one of the more recenter ones, I think it was the Black Cops one or something. It's the one where you're a military guy & you go around & shoot guys that are trying to shoot you & there are a few different weapons you can use & you follow the path that the game makes you follow. Whichever that one was. I thought the graphics were pretty good. Not Far Cry/Crysis good, but pretty good.
Bottom line is it ain't the engine/graphics that makes CoD such a ****** franchise. It's just about everything else. It's like Apple, you dumbasses buy it BECAUSE it's overpriced & overhyped. I say go do something worthwhile like eat a few lady farts & stop promoting such crap.

We hate it because its OLD and it looks like ****, sorry but this game engine has not looked good since the first Modern warfare. And people are getting sick of buying a "new" game that is just a big DLC pack as well. Glad I only fell for it at MW2

I bought modernwarfare and the one before.. cant even remember the name. I honestly hate COD. I ran around stabbing 30 people in a row with the knife. They think their game is so streamlined, it is honestly in my opinion pure ****. I would never pay for a DLC package. Every aspect they forced into that game ****** me off. COD XIII Come get some today!

When there was a lot of hype of MW3 vs BF3 before they came out, i thought its a no brainer, BF3 looked amazing. I even got the latest gpu. SP was quite good, thought MP would be awesome as it did in BF2..Already owner of MW2 thought that MW3 is same stuff - didnt update until just a month ago. Well fck, i was surprised how **** good it felt in MP, the FPS and graphics quality is just the right mix, not to mention very very polished game mechanism. BF3 may be more real in every sense but its engine just makes it so **** clunky and unenjoyable in MP, Personal opinion

I think that the overuse of the engine is totally justified.
First we have the issue of the 10 year console cycle, which basically discourages devs to make new engines.
On the other hand, COD is using a modified ID-tech 3 engine (essentially the Quake 3 arena engine). What I don't understand is why do they not move to Id-tech 4 (Doom 3) or id-tech 5 (Rage).
id-Tech 5 can make impressive graphics, still performs at 60 fps in pretty much all systems, and plus as far as I know it is relatively straight forward to migrate from id-Tech 3.
I can't think of a reason that could excuse them for not doing such migration other than just wanting to milk the cow of dollars.....
And don't forget, the people are actually right. We get a new COD/Black Ops release almost every year, and all they do is add a bunch of maps and videos, and a weapon or two. These are not real full games, they should be paid DLCs.

But then mention how their are 2 better engines right now that could replace the **** quake3 engine. I'm sure it comes down to money. They don't want to pay bigger royalties... And as far as not developing another engine for the same console? Wtf? You may be right about it gets them lazy and they rather not develop a whole other engine for a console that might start aging.. So what it comes down to is they don't feel confident enough to develop a game fast enough so they just don't bother with it. Consoles killed gaming? Very much stunted the gaming industry anyways.

I wouldnt say that the 7yr old engine is hated, its just over used. The series is using almost identical texture and sound effects from game to game. Sure if it aint broke dont fix it, but you will need some sort of fuel to keep it going.

The IW 4.0's rendering engine was actually developed in 2003, and was built around the limitations of DirectX 8. If you've seen some of the newer engines built on DirectX 11 you'll see such a stark contrast, the polygon count alone makes up the difference in overall graphics quality. The other benefits of Direct X 11 give designers so much versatility and potential and it is really sad to see the large game companies still trying to milk DirectX 8 and 9. I don't think David Vonderhaar understands this. Using lighting and shaders from DirectX 11 on old rendering engines is a lot like taking a Pentium 4 computer, putting a nice paint job on the case, adding some LED's and selling it as a new gaming machine.

There was a time when a new game meant a new graphics engine. However back then games came out every 3-4 years or so.
Now it's one game a year and you can't develop a new engine every year.
If you make real AAA games then you need a solid 3-5 years to make the. COD is not AAA.
Is it fun for some people? Yes, for me? No. Don't like the multi player and the story's pretty stupid. I played the one (LAN center dident buy the game) where you kill civilians in an airport.. Soooo retarded.

From some point in time, they became map makers for 60$ a pack. That's the problem, because single player experience is a joke. I remember the first Cod in pc, with the WW2 theme, and that one was a much better satisfying experience regarding SP content.

joystick and game pad jocks can bite me, these on line multi-player games options are great for someone the love the internet transplanted into their **** crack., I prefer single player mode. The problem with most games is the lack of randomness in programmed player. If the programmer allowed for AI choices of different movements the games would be greater and not quickly stored on the shelf or recycle bins. Besides, only kids, the addicted layers, and the anti-social withdrawn turds sit there playing on-line for hours. The casual player that ventures there has little chance surviving for any length of time. Besides, I have thing to do with my time, and my gaming is usually done late at night or very early in the morning. By the way, the PC is a far better platform for games, as the keyboard allows for greatly control (that is if the frigging dumb-bell programmers do not block reassignment of keys.

This game is not a game really, its more a simulator of propaganda from the american millitary.
They want to make young men inspired by war so they are more easy to recruit into say wars that bush started.. Also its nice that a large procent of the money they make go directly into war and killing people. Maybe it sounds bizzare but its true. I am not sure about dice, at least we are swedish.
Also thats why they dont put much effort into the "game"

You have no idea what you are talking about. These games arent about propaganda. They are about profit. Most of the Americans that buy CoD don't even play the single player, they get it for the multiplayer. And DICE made BF3, wouldn't you say that's a bit more realistic to real military standards? You basically said because we are American it is Propaganda and because you are Swedish DICE is not. That is not only ignorant but prejudice. And I thought you people were supposed to be well educated. Apparently not.

I can tell by your name that you really love your country and that is ok,
but to say that COD is not propaganda tells me that your dont understand how your country works.
Single player or not has nothing to do with it. Read about it and you will understand that the millitary is putting tons of money into these kind of games, to inspire kids, if you dont accept that at least 50% then I feel sorry for you. Oh and dice is owned by EA, and EA is in america.. What do you think would happen if dice didnt do a modern shooter ? EA would let them go offcourse.. Why do you think the world RIGHT NOW is getting flooded by repeats of old shooters, check the situation in the world after twin towers ? people would like to see some smart new game ideas but you know its easy to cash in on these rehashed old shooters.. I know you would like to think otherwise, google it! read! learn my friend, your living in a box =)

Well many people have just heard the word "engine" and they don't even know what it is or how it works. While the IW engine is good, it doesn't have to mean that they need to keep it forever. Black Ops should've gotten a brand new engine. But as long as people are willing to pay $15 for 5 maps (three of which were old maps recycled)...they will never change it.

This is the only real "problem" with having a ten year console cycle. It only takes a few years for developers to figure out how to use a console to its fullest, and after that there is no reason for a new engine since the sequels are the same genre and can't really look much better. Now, I'm not overly concerned about graphics, so I couldn't care less what the game really looks like as long as the game plays fine, but I suppose this could upset some people.